Mr. Seward to Mr.
Adams.
No. 666.]
Department of State,
Washington,
July 28, 1863.
Sir: Enclosed is an unsealed letter of the 25th
instant, addressed by me to Thomas Bayley Potter, esquire, of
Manchester, in reply to a communication from him, as the chairman of a
large public meeting then (12th June) recently held in the Free Trade
Hall. I will thank you to read my reply, and if you shall see no
impropriety in it, to forward it to its address.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.
Mr. Seward to Mr. Potter.
Department of State, Washington,
July 25, 1863.
Sir: I have had the honor to receive from
the Reverend Dr. Massie and the Reverend J. H. Ryland your address,
in the name of a large public meeting which was recently held at
Free Trade Hall, in Manchester, to the President of the United
States, together with the papers which constitute the accompaniment
of that communication. These papers have been submitted to the
President of the United States, and I am charged by him to inform
you that he has read them with the most lively satisfaction, and
with a profound sense of the obligation which the reverend religious
pastors in France and the reverend religious pastors in Great
Britain have laid upon the world by their correspondence with each
other, and their common address to the Christian ministers and
pastors throughout the United States. The proceedings of the meeting
at Free Trade Hall, and its address to the President, touchingly and
admirably harmonize with the sentiments which pervade the
correspondence before mentioned.
The parties in these proceedings will readily understand that the
attempted revolution in the United States seriously affects this
government and American society itself in many ways which it has not
fallen within the province of those parties to examine. While the
interests thus naturally and not improperly overlooked in Europe
furnish the strongest possible motives to the people of
[Page 371]
the United States for
suppressing the insurrection and maintaining constitutional
government received at the hands of their fathers, the President
readily accepts and avows as an additional and irresistible motive
the suggestion made by friends of our country in Europe, that the
success of the insurrection would result in the establishment, for
the first time in the history of the human race, of a state based
upon the exclusive foundations of African slavery.
I have the honor to be, sir, your very obedient servant,
Mr. Thomas Bayley Potter, Esq., &c., &c., &c.
